I Survived the Sinking of the Titanic, 1912

Lauren Tarshis's I Survived the Sinking of the Titanic, 1912 is a fast and frightening disaster story for 9 year olds about a boy whose great ideas keep landing him in trouble on the grandest ship afloat.

What happens

George Calder is ten. He's sailing home to America in first class with his little sister Phoebe and their Aunt Daisy. There's a heated swimming pool and a steward who offers cocoa before bed.

The trouble is, the Titanic gives George ideas. He's climbed up to the crow's nest and slid down the banister of the grand staircase (straight at a lady covered in diamonds). One more stunt and Papa will send him to army school.

Then George hears there's an Egyptian mummy in the baggage hold. What ten-year-old could leave that alone? He creeps down at night to prise open the crate, and that's where he is when the ship hits the iceberg.

The story opens on the sinking deck, then jumps back nineteen hours. So your reader knows what's coming, and every cosy detail gets a shiver. Phoebe counts just sixteen lifeboats and can't make the numbers work.

Phoebe is the best thing in it. She's eight, never stops asking questions and has appointed herself George's guardian angel. When she goes missing that night, George follows her trail of lemon drops along the corridors (a trick borrowed from Hansel and Gretel).

George is funny and a bit hopeless at being good. He's also faced down a panther in the woods back home (nobody at school believes him).

Worth knowing before you hand it over

The sinking isn't softened. In the first chapter people are screaming, a gun goes off and someone shouts "Take my baby!" Later a steward waves a pistol at a crowd of passengers locked below, and a dad has to put his four-year-old in a lifeboat and stay behind. George hears hundreds of people calling for help in the dark water, and the number who died is said out loud. (George's mum died before the story starts, and he misses her.)

For a child who worries about being separated from you, or isn't ready for a story where lots of people die, this is one to read together or save. If you've got a reader who already knows everything about the Titanic, they'll probably race through it.

What to read next

This is the first I Survived book. Each one puts a different child in a real disaster, so the order doesn't matter. If this one goes down well, try I Survived the Shark Attacks of 1916 next. Chet is ten like George, and when he says he's seen a shark in the creek nobody believes him either.